Today is Sept. 1. Welcome you to the ‘ber months — aka September, October, November and December.

Though astronomical autumn isn’t for a few weeks, meteorological autumn kicks off today and thoughts often turn to fall and leaf peeping.

What will the Ozarks autumn look like this year? Dr. William McClain, a forage agronomist and associate professor at Missouri State University, is going to explain the science behind the color change and give us his best predictions for the season.

“Typically, the initial trigger is the days start getting shorter and the nights start getting longer. But how vibrant the colors are is dependent on how well the plant did during that growing season,” he said. “So, if it photosynthesized a lot, fixed a lot of carbon, it’s going to have the materials to be very vibrant.”

McClain said fall’s color change is entirely dependent on the year’s weather preceding the season. Plus, what he calls stress events.

“But if there’s a lot of stress or stressful events in that period of time, like drought, or this year we have the opposite of that. We have oxygen deprivation from too much flooding,” McClain said. “So, those are stresses that add up to, it could trigger the tree to go early or it could just trigger, the tree changes colors like normal, but it’s a very short period of time before it drops its leaves.”

The Old Farmer’s Almanac puts peak southwest Missouri color around late October and into November.

What’s McClain’s prediction of this Ozarks’ autumn?

Listen to the full episode below.

Read the full transcript